Tina Modotti: An amazing life in photography

Sister in arms to Mexico’s revolutionaries, Tina Modotti went from anonymous
muse to one of the most brilliant photographers of the 20th century. Her
story and legacy is extraordinary, says Anna Saunders, as a new Royal
Academy exhibition will show.

Modotti's Woman with Flag, c1928, found in an Oregan farmhouse in the 1990sPhoto: THROCKMORTON FINE ART INC

The woman is turned away from the camera, her body curved into submission. Bright sunlight glances off her back, recasting her limbs into an object of abstract art. Nude on the Azotea was taken in 1924, and in the decades that followed the art world would focus almost entirely on the man who took it – the photographer Edward Weston – and little on the woman who featured in it. For years, this nameless, faceless woman, who appeared in so many of Weston’s nudes, was known only as his mistress and muse.

But, as biographers would discover, there was much more to Tina Modotti than that. Until her sudden – and some say mysterious – death at 45, the Italian-born artist lived an extraordinary life, morphing from silent-film actress to model, muse, photographer, Mexican revolutionary and (possibly) spy. Yet it wasn’t until the 1990s – when a cache of her photographs was discovered in a farmhouse in Oregon and several platinum prints, Roses and Calla Lilies, were auctioned for hundreds of thousands of dollars in New York – that her own photographic legacy and incredible story would come to light.

Since then, biographers have devoted books to her, museums, galleries have clamoured for her work, and film studios have suggested biopics of her life (Madonna put herself forward to play Modotti). But it’s her photography – which championed the lives of ordinary Mexican workers and documented the revolutionary spirit of the times – for which she remains most famous. Next month a selection of her images, taken in Mexico, will be exhibited at the Royal Academy.

Altough she’s best known for her links to Mexico, Modotti was born in Udine in Italy in 1896 to Assunta, a seamstress, and Giuseppe, a mason. Finances were tight in the Modotti household, and in 1908 Giuseppe travelled from Italy to America to find work. Over the next few years his wife and six children gradually followed him, and in 1913 Modotti arrived in San Francisco, where she became a seamstress for the local Teatro Italiano. But at 16, and already a beauty, Tina aspired to do more than make costumes – and within a few months she was starring in theatre productions, too.

In 1917 Modotti met and fell in love with the poet, writer, activist and artist Roubaix de l’Abrie Richey (whose extravagant name belied the fact that he was from the Mid-West and called Ruby Ritchie). A year later Modotti followed him to Los Angeles. In 1918 Hollywood was still in its infancy; the first film studio had just opened, and the shops, bars, banks and restaurants were yet to come. However, it was already a magnet for artists and intellectuals – and Modotti, who found parts in three silent films, and Roubaix (known as Robo), who sold batik cloths, were in their element.

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There are varying accounts as to how Modotti came to meet the married photographer Edward Weston – some suggest it was at one of the infamous weekly parties she and Robo threw – but what is known is that by April 1921 the pair had embarked on a passionate affair. Modotti modelled for Weston often – and his portraits of her are round-cheeked, plump-lipped and blurry with sensuality.

L-R: Modotti in San Francisco in 1921; Weston photographed by Modotti in 1923

Looking at these images, it’s difficult to imagine that Robo didn’t know about the affair, and, six months later, he announced plans to move to Mexico, asking Modotti to join him. The country had just emerged from civil war, and was on the brink of a cultural and intellectual revolution. In the bohemian circles in which Modotti and Robo moved, it was a tantalisingly exotic destination.

Modotti agreed to go, but delayed her trip – and by the time she arrived in Mexico, Robo had contracted smallpox. A few days later, on 9 February 1922, he died, aged 31. After his funeral Modotti went back to America but, with little to hold her there, returned to her original plan to settle in Mexico City. In 1923 she set off again – this time with Weston (who left his wife and children behind) in tow.

The plan was to open a portrait studio, and the couple made a deal: Modotti, who spoke Spanish, would look after the administrative side of things, while Weston would, in return, teach her photography. In reality, Mexico was a period of experimentation for them both; he moved away from the dreamy, pictorialist portraits that were popular at the time and focused on evocative nudes (mostly of Modotti) and still lifes. Modotti, too, filled her portfolio with still lifes (including the now famous Roses), but her images were subtly different; soft and textured, where Weston’s were sleek, stark and modernist.

In those early years Mexico was everything the couple had hoped. The city was alive – and thanks to public art and education programmes – artists were flocking home to Mexico from Europe. Modotti and Weston filled their days exploring the countryside, or taking portraits, while nights were spent at the Café Europa or at the homes of other artists, such as Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo or the poet Pablo Neruda.

But soon the couple’s Mexican idyll began to sour. They both had affairs (including Modotti with Rivera, then married to his first wife, Lupe), and by the mid-1920s their approach to photography had diverged as well. While Weston continued to see himself as an artist, whose sole purpose was to create beautiful imagery from even the most ordinary of objects, Modotti saw it differently; to her, photography was a means to document social change.

As the decade wore on Modotti’s work began to reflect her growing interest in politics and communism; flowers and other innocuous objects began to disappear, to be replaced with human subjects and potent symbolism. She photographed stoic labourers struggling under heavy loads, proud indigenous women in native costume, and tightly cropped, calloused workers’ hands.

When Weston left Mexico in 1926, Modotti became even more politicised, joining the Communist party and working for El Machete. She established herself as the official photographer of the muralist movement (often featuring in murals, too), which also had links to the party. One of her most famous works, Workers Reading El Machete, was taken about this time. With its portrayal of three nameless, faceless peasants all reading the radical Left-wing newspaper, it perfectly encapsulates both a nation in transition and Modotti’s own burgeoning activism. But in 1929 her political activities came to an abrupt halt when she was implicated in the murder of her lover, the Cuban revolutionary and communist writer Julio Antoni0 Mella.

The pair had been in a relationship for about a year, and on 8 January 1929 they were walking home together when Mella was shot twice by an unknown assailant. For the next week, Modotti – already a figure of scandal, thanks to Weston’s nudes – was the prime suspect in the murder, and although she was eventually cleared, the Mexican authorities deported her from the country soon after.

For the next decade Modotti drifted between Berlin, Moscow and Paris, becoming more involved in politics and less in photography. She fell in love with another revolutionary, Vittorio Vidali, and worked for Red Aid as a nurse – and possibly as a spy. In 1939 after the fall of Madrid, she boarded a ship to New York, where – in a happy twist of fate – officials, unconvinced by her fake documentation, put her on a ship bound for Mexico.

Back in the country she loved, Modotti returned briefly to photography. But her second Mexican sojourn was short-lived. In January 1942 on her way home from a dinner party at Pablo Neruda’s house, she suffered a massive heart attack while in the back of a taxi. She was 45.

The coroner later ruled that Modotti’s death was the result of natural causes – though, with her colourful past, suspicions of an assassination lingered for years. On the death certificate, her occupation was recorded as 'housewife’.

It would take another half a century – and the discovery of the cache of unseen photographs in a trunk belonging to Robo’s descendants – before Modotti’s true role in history would be recognised. But today, with work hanging in museums and galleries around the world, there can be little doubt: Tina Modotti may have once been a mistress, model, muse, silent-film actress – even a spy – but, above all, she was an artist.

'Mexico: A Revolution in Art’ is at the Royal Academy of Arts from 6 July to 29 September (royalacademy.org.uk)